“It would have been nicer if they announced the track a few minutes earlier,” said the lady behind me as we both walked fast toward the long line already forming at Penn Station. She wore a green suit and carried the ease of an experienced professional.
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“I used to do the NY–Philly route all the time, but I haven’t taken Amtrak in almost a decade,” she added.
I smiled, grateful for the distraction.
“So what takes you to Philadelphia?” she asked.
“I… am going just for the day. I’ll be…meeting a friend… for lunch,” I said.
I lied.
“That sounds lovely,” she said warmly. “I know a few excellent restaurants near the historic center…” She listed them carefully, as if I might need them later.
I didn’t. I wasn’t meeting anyone for lunch, infact I wasn’t meeting anyone at all – except, perhaps, myself.
To explain that lie, I have to go back to the spring/ summer of 2021 – what feels like a lifetime ago now – when I was dealing with a life-altering illness. An illness that sent me to the ER without warning. That without an ER, could have killed me.
I was the same age my mother had been when she died of something similar. I still remember her last evening with us – chatting, laughing, and then struggling to breathe. Within an hour, she was gone. For decades, I never imagined I would live past her age. So when I was diagnosed, it felt like the inevitable had finally arrived.
When it comes to survival, the human mind is ingenious . Faced with overwhelming fear, mine devised a system.
My mother didn’t have access to an ER. And she didn’t have a partner who could help her.
I had both.
ONE – I lived two minutes from the hospital.
TWO – I had Mark.
So I told myself: I am not going to die.
When waves of anxiety rose, triggering memories of my mother’s last moments, I calmed them by reminding myself ONE-TWO. ONE-TWO. I had both. I was safe.
It took nearly a year, but my medical team finally found the right medication. I was lucky – only a small percentage of people in my situation are ever correctly diagnosed, and even fewer find the right treatment. Mark played a big part in helping me get there.
ONE–TWO.
They say if a dog bites you, it can take years to trust dogs again, no matter how many harmless encounters you’ve had. Our brains are wired that way. In a world where missing to spot one tiger could mean death, it made sense to remember the danger more than the safety.
But what happens when your body has spent months encountering tigers – some real, some imagined?
Having survived the illness, I found myself in the thick of an anxiety disorder, my brain stuck looking for a tiger to leap out at me at any time. I had somehow survived the first problem but now I faced a second, I was unable to leave my sanctuaries, my safe zones;
ONE – Bay Shore.
TWO – Mark.
Anxiety can be a solitary prison. It is deeply personal and quietly humiliating. How do you explain that you – once fearless, once someone who crossed two oceans alone at 22 years young before Google existed- are now afraid to drive ten minutes by yourself, the shortest distance from your ONE-TWO overwhelming your entire system.
That was my life in 2022.
But I also knew this – I could not let anxiety shrink my world. I had to start small, and expand my circle.
I began by letting go of ONE.
I started driving all over Long Island – my heart in my mouth at first. Next, Mark and I flew to Los Angeles – a six-hour flight with no nearby ER. I took medication to steady myself, but I made it. Then Toronto – without needing medication. Then the UK. Then Prague, and Italy, and Spain. And finally, this past February India – where ER is more theoretical than real!
I was no longer handcuffed to ONE.
Which left TWO.
They say marriage is about becoming one – but that’s meant to be figurative! Being unable to leave your spouse because of an anxiety disorder, is not the dream of oneness anyone is looking for!
—
Then two months ago I was invited to participate in the national convention of Braver Angels; an organization I work closely with. A 3-day affair in Philadelphia from June 25-27 – that’s next week. My anxiety answered No – you are not traveling without Mark!
I hesitated. I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t say no either. Because somewhere inside, I knew it was time. Through this entire journey, I had realized I had been forgetting that there was a THREE – ME.
It was time to meet ME again.
I said yes. And then I decided to practice. I took the train to Philadelphia twice – once with a cousin, and once on my own. Both times it was hard, but not as hard as it used to. And last week, standing in that line at Penn Station, I lied to that chatty woman – because the truth was just a tiny bit more complicated!
I was taking the train to Philadelphia on my own. Spending a few hours there on my own. And coming back on my own.
I was practicing being with the THREE.
And I was thinking of Philadelphia – of that summer in 1776, when a group of people chose to step out of fear and into uncertainty. We remember them as bold, decisive, fearless. But they were human. They didn’t know how it would turn out. They took a great risk and signed their declaration of freedom. Because freedom is worth the risk. It is worth new declarations.
I wasn’t signing anything grand that day. But somewhere between Bay Shore and Philadelphia, and everyday since, I have been making a quieter declaration of independence.
There is One.
There is Two.
And there is THREE.
Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is the Co-Chair for Braver Angels Long Island and a trained facilitator for Crossing Party Lines moderating conversations that bring people together across their political divides. Swati is also an environmentalist and lives in a Net Zero Energy home with her husband. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com